WHAT'S THE NAME OF THAT R.E.M. SONG AGAIN?

OH YES…

LOSING MY RELIGION

My first church experience I can remember was taking communion near the pulpit. I had no idea what I was doing but enjoyed the fact that were giving out bread and little glasses of grape juice to everyone. I got a little unreligiously overzealous and took a huge chunk of bread and snuck a second shotglass of juice out of the tray. I can't remember if the deacon was disturbed by that, but two of my brothers were.

Then when my family lived in Richford there was a Methodist church right down the street and we went to Sunday school a couple weeks out of the month during spring and summer. They also had vacation Bible school, a whole week of excellent cold lunches and lots of singing and memorizing verses. They also told "inspirational" stories that even as a ten year old I thought were hooey. I did find the church basement in one of the unsupervised moments and found a Pogo Ball, popular during the 80's, and the one thing that certain church taught me was that Pogo Ball was a marketing ploy since they made it look a lot easier in the commercials.

Three years later we lived in a trailer park and shortly after my brother Paul moved out on bad terms a neighbor told my mother about this church her and her kids go to and invited my sister and I to go along. I didn't like it the first time but my mother was insistent that we were somehow God-fearing even though she didn't bother with church herself. The church was non-denominational which jived with my belief that the church should be allowed to have sex, not sects. I got heavily involved with that church emotionally, socially, and spiritually and was baptized later in the summer of my 13^th year. I started keeping track of my sins, and Bible-thumper or not, I calmed down greatly from being a hyperactive freak to a quiet, contemplative nerd. The pastor, Charles Spence, got heavily involved in my life and saw what my family was doing to me. His response to that was not to my parents' liking, so they yanked me out. My sister had long since lost her support.

My parents then insisted that we all go to a Baptist church close to home and maybe it was bias, but I hated it. It was full of old people who were only zealous enough to go to church and enjoy pot luck dinners. Very few volunteered to sing, read, or contribute anything. Every time everyone bowed their heads, my protest was to keep my head up and face front, eyes open. My sister caught me and tattled, but I opined that if her eyes hadn't been opened she wouldn't have seen me and that was one of the few times my logic won.

I eventually warmed up to the place and still went every so often after I turned 18, which according to my mother was the age I could choose not to go. However, the last time I went something happened that destroyed my faith altogether. The old pastor was retiring and we were literally holding auditions for the new guy. A lot of young ones came through who were on fire and kept me interested, but probably scared the older folks. We had an interim pastor who was much like the old one, who casually made lame jokes and spoke his sermons softly and casually, which to me seemed almost condescending since he preached to us like we were all ten years old. When voting time came, they did not vote for a new pastor, the vote was whether or not we wanted to keep the interim guy. I voted "no". When the votes were counted, it was announced that the vote was UNANIMOUS for "yes". I was appalled. That same day emptying the dishwasher the thought ran through my mind that it was possible that there was no God, and so began my agnosticism. It wasn't in full swing until after Richard Gomez, who tried to use his delusional God against me, and I completely lost faith nearly out of default.
My thoughts on religion are negative, but my thoughts on spirituality are overwhelmingly positive. There is a force that runs through everything there is and if it escapes random once in a while, hey, I believe anything's possible and someone could believe a complete coincidence is a work of God if they want to.

People made the structure in the above picture in hopes that God would like what they did and send them straight to heaven. Far be it from me to guess the mind of God, but I'm thinking he would have yawned if he does those sort of things, because this is what God made for man:

Eat my crucifix, Billy Graham.

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